“That was pretty crazy. I think it seemed like everything just hit something and found a way into the net,” Andersen said. “In the big picture, they earned their bounces.”

Leafs coach Mike Babcock couldn’t fault Andersen, though he took issue with the NHL for allowing Larsson’s goal to stand up following a video review for goaltender interference.

The Sabres continued their home dominance over Toronto, improving to 19-3-1 in their past 23 meetings at Buffalo. … One of the more amusing moments came when television cameras captured an exchange between Ristolainen and Toronto’s Nazem Kadri, after the two were sent to the penalty box for fighting in the second period. Ristolainen held up four fingers in telling Kadri the teams play four more times. Kadri responded by correcting Ristolainen, saying it’s only three more times because Monday’s game didn’t count. … Maple Leafs LW Matt Martin had an assist while playing for the first time since a 4-2 loss to Colorado on Jan. 22. Martin had been a healthy scratch for 18 consecutive games.

Dallas appeared to have a chance to score the winning goal, but Devin Shore couldn’t get to John Klingberg’s pass in front of an open net. The puck went back to the blue line, where Karlsson beat Tyler Pitlick to the puck and skated in to beat goalie Kari Lehtonen.

Stars goalie Ben Bishop left because of a lower-body injury after making 12 saves in the first period. Lehtonen replaced Bishop and had 15 saves. Bishop is expected to miss at least two games.

Playing with a nor’easter carrying on outside the Wells Fargo center, the Flyers missed a chance to move into a tie for first place in the Metropolitan Division Wednesday night with a 5-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins — their third loss in as many tries against their rivals this season.

The Flyers’ fourth straight loss after 10 wins in 11 games was only the start of the problems, as the team faced weather uncertainty for a trip into stormy Boston for Thursday night’s game.

Oh, and we should probably tell you the Bruins, snug in their beds at home while the Flyers played, have won four straight on their current six-game homestand.

There was an ending that included the Raiders having one touchdown overturned by an instant replay review that put the ball down inside the 1-yard line; then having another touchdown negated by an offensive pass interference penalty; then having the game extended by two defensive penalties on the Chiefs; then winning, 31-30, on quarterback Derek Carr’s touchdown pass to wide receiver Michael Crabtree and the ensuing extra point.

On the next drive, Brady went after Anzalone yet again, this time by tossing it to his monster tight end Rob Gronkowski while under heavy duress in the backfield. (Gronk proceeded to throw a defender off him on his way to the end zone, because of course he did.)

If you don’t think Gronk thinks TD No. 69 is his favorite career achievement, well, you don’t know Gronk. And in the last minute of the first quarter, Brady found Chris Hogan up the left sideline — and even successfully talked the refs out of calling an offensive pass interference for a pick play.

Teddy Bridgewater is back but Case Keenum continues to excel at QB. There’s no immediate need to make a change. Bridgewater’s comeback is to be admired and his future still could be great. But for now, he should be the fallback plan in case Keenum begins to struggle.

It quietly has become a pretty good division race between the Jaguars and Titans. They’re good, young teams filled with new faces, and both are playing well right now. The Jaguars play their next three games against the Browns, Cardinals and Colts and cannot afford a misstep.

The Buccaneers were one of the league’s bigger disappointments this season with Jameis Winston at QB. The forced move to Ryan Fitzpatrick, with Winston sidelined by an ailing shoulder, certainly isn’t a long-term situation. But in the short term, maybe things will look a little better and perhaps Winston will come back healthier and mentally refreshed.

While the Patriots defense lacks a dominant pass rusher, New England still ranked seventh with 42 sacks during the regular season. Defensive end Trey Flowers led New England with 6 1/2 sacks while outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy had 5 1/2 and defensive tackle Deatrich Wise had five. Vatai could see multiple players across from him in the Super Bowl, including former Steelers defensive end James Harrison, and must play as well as he did against the Vikings to keep Foles upright.

A: If I were him, I’d take Durant with my first pick, but James will have his own motives. The draft will not be televised and the league will not provide the draft order. Then again, few things stay secret in the NBA. With Curry as the starting point guard for his team, it makes sense that Irving would end up on James’ team. We’ll see.

A: Commissioner Adam Silver said he doesn’t want to put the captains in a “compromising position” by televising it. It could create the type of drama that sometimes happens at drafts when a player is left unselected, which is of course what fans want to see!

Q: Did the players tell Silver that?

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is nursing a sore right hand that limited his practice time this week. But barring being unable to play (not likely), he has once again been superb this season and will find a way to make plays against the Jaguars defense. Bortles has to be able to answer.

2. Could trick plays be a factor? The Jaguars might have to get creative to pull off the upset, but Patriots coach Bill Belichick could reach into his bag of tricks as well.

The proposal came from a group of players known as the Players Coalition. It includes Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins, retired wide receiver Anquan Boldin and other players who have been deeply involved in community activism and have been pushing for league support of those endeavors.

The Oct. 17 meeting between players and owners was following by the owners’ regularly scheduled two-day fall meeting at a Manhattan hotel. The owners emerged from that meeting without issuing a requirement for players to stand for the national anthem before games. Goodell and owners said they believe that players should stand for the anthem, but some owners said they were focused instead on their discussions with players about community activism.

McNair reportedly told fellow owners at that meeting that “we can’t have the inmates running the prison.”

Y’all know how I feel about quarterback play. If you have a better quarterback, you tend to win. Football can be that simple. The Divisional Round this weekend is headlined by the quarterbacks who are proven and those who aren’t.

The proven quarterbacks — Tom Brady, Big Ben, Drew Brees, and Matt Ryan — have all been there, and three of the four have won a Super Bowl. They all face unproven commodities under center this weekend: Marcus Mariota, Blake Bortles, Case Keenum, and Nick Foles.

The Eagles are home underdogs against the Falcons, the first time a No. 1 seed has been an underdog in the Divisional Round. The reason is clear: Nick Foles.

The final result has been pretty enviable. The Falcons offense returned largely intact this year, and yet, with the loss of Shanahan, stumbled out of the gate. But because a handful of young defensive players took the next step, that unit evolved into a Top 10 group capable of buying its counterpart time to work its problems out. It created an environment where the Falcons don’t have to score 30 points every week to win anymore.

And where there were holes, like the one created by Chester’s retirement, the program had new talent ready. It’s how Schweizer became such a good example of what’s going on there.

The Bengals jumped out to a 17-3 lead, but would later squander that lead and fall behind 27-24 with just under nine minutes to go in the game.

Faced with a fourth-and-12 with under a minute to go, Dalton threw a strike to Tyler Boyd for a 49-yard touchdown:

There are a number of ways your season could end poorly — but this is just brutal. At least there was some good to come out of it, as the Bills were able to celebrate a long-awaited postseason berth.

“The first thing you’ll notice, you want plays that start out looking the same that are different—your run actions, whether it’s play-action, or some of your movements, where you’re bootlegging him,” McVay said. “Those are the things he’s really done a good job with, especially when you take into account the stuff in the preseason where early-down plays, you’re running play-actions and movements.

“He’s good at it, he’s gotten really comfortable with it. And that’s where there’s a good chance to open up some things down the field.”

This week, the challenge changes, of course, with an opponent that knows McVay and his scheme exceedingly well, because it’s their scheme, too. And so, as the coach is quick to point out, they’ll have to keep what he calls “the progression going.”

Wide receiver Antonio Brown would be listed as questionable if the Pittsburgh Steelers were playing in the wild-card round of the playoffs, coach Mike Tomlin said Tuesday.

The Giants got a jump on coaching-change season with the firing of second-year head man Ben McAdoo, but they won’t be the only team to relieve a coach of his duties this December or January.

Again, this is a loose list. There are guys on it who won’t get head-coaching jobs. There might well be guys who aren’t on it but will get head-coaching jobs. These things are unpredictable sometimes. But these are some of the hotter names right now, so we thought we’d fill you in on why. I’m sure we’ll be discussing this further in the coming weeks. In the meantime, enjoy the appetizer:

“Our organization is better because of Jim, and we are forever grateful.”

The Vikings have a playoff bye with third-string quarterback Case Keenum throwing the ball and rookie Dalvin Cook, who opened the season as their starting running back, on injured reserve. Shurmur was just 9-23 in two seasons as head coach of the Browns from 2011-12, but everyone should get a mulligan after the Browns, right? Shurmur comes from Andy Reid’s coaching tree and had some success under Chip Kelly in Philadelphia. He will probably get another shot at some point.

There’s a lot of interest in the 42-year-old former Patriots linebacker, whose perspective and intelligence stood out when he played and who has risen quickly in the eyes of people who evaluate coaches. Might it make sense to try to pair him with former Patriots executive Scott Pioli if you need both a coach and a GM?

He expressed gratitude for the “great effort put forth by our players and coaching staff who poured their hearts out in an effort to maintain the standard of excellence this organization has grown to expect.”

Portland is in a funk, having lost five straight, including its previous four at home. They were held to 42 percent shooting from the field on Monday, and they allowed the Warriors to shoot it at a 55 percent clip. Only three Trail Blazers players scored in double digits.

He scored a game-high 39 points. After being down by as many as 24 points, Portland reduced the deficit to eight down the stretch of the fourth quarter, but Lillard had little help and wasn’t able to finish the deal.

Hours before his medflight to Pittsburgh, the Ravens gathered to continue preparing for Sunday night’s game against the Steelers, they opened their team meeting by praying for Shazier, the Ravens website reported.

“You just pray for a person like that. It doesn’t matter what team he’s on,” Ravens receiver Mike Wallace said. “We’re one family, the NFL family, at the end of the day. That’s a person who’s a son, a dad, whatever he is to somebody. People like him and care about him so you never want to see anything like that happen to anybody.”

It was more coincidental, because Jeter has kept his distance from the Yankees since his playing career, rarely returning to visit during spring training (even though he resides in Tampa) or coming to Bronx to check out a game. He was honored in Monument Park when his uniform was retired in May, but beyond that, he has been a ghost around the Bronx.

Another longtime executive said that Jeter faces a new reality as a former player who now finds himself in the front office. He’s responsible for an entire organization now, and he has to clearly explain the plan if he wants to get his fan base behind it.

Coach Sean McDermott stood his ground in the days following the Nathan Peterman debacle, but Tyrod Taylor was named starter for this game.

The Golden State Warriors were without three of their starters, and yet the Portland Trail Blazers were still no match for the reigning NBA champs.

Although the Browns have played in only four one-possession games during their 0-12 start, they’ve made plenty of teams sweat early in games. They have failed to make the one or two key plays in the middle of games to tip the outcome into their control. Gordon gives them a much better shot at doing just that.

Green Bay can’t afford another loss with its slim NFC playoff hopes, and Baltimore has zero breathing room in a tight AFC wild-card race. The Browns would have had no chance in those games without the punch of Gordon.

But in the Dawg Pound, they suddenly have more than a puncher’s chance to play spoiler, once or twice.

Then Tomlin took it a step further and did what I can’t recall any NFL coach ever doing: He talked about a game three weeks down the road, the Steelers’ potentially pivotal matchup against the Patriots on Dec. 17.

“I’m going to embrace the elephant in the room,” Tomlin said. “It’s probably going to be part one. But probably if we’re both doing what we’re supposed to do, the second is really going to be big. And what happens in the first is going to set up the second one, and determine the location in the second one.”

And Tomlin didn’t back off after the Packers game when asked about his previous comments, saying, “(Dungy) asked for non-coachspeak. We have a good football team. I’ve got a great deal of confidence in them. Everybody in America knows that’s a big game. We couldn’t deny that if we wanted to. So I stand by the statement.”

The Seahawks’ slow-starting ways caught up to them against the Jaguars. They gave up too many big plays, to the point they couldn’t make up ground by making a few plays of their own.

After blowing a 14-point lead, Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown engineered two scoring drives in the final 3:15 to pull off a remarkable comeback which rivals Brown’s “Immaculate Extension” last Christmas.

Dorsey became the Browns’ new general manager last week in one of the clumsiest transfers of power we’ve seen in a while — which is saying a lot since Dorsey was available only because the Chiefs fired him last June, in the middle of the offseason. The Browns topped that, because they’re the Browns, and under Jimmy Haslam’s watch, that’s what they do best — being worse than the others.

“The money always wins out in the end,” one of the executives said.

With Stanton gone, the new CEO is the biggest star on his own team. And so far, Jeter looks like he’s playing out of position.

Gordon is a game-changer for the Browns’ offense. Cleveland had its chances in Los Angeles in what turned out to be a 19-10 loss, but other than the running of Kizer and the athleticism of rookie tight end David Njoku, it lacked other sparks. The Chargers’ defense is good, and it hung tough at home.

The Browns stay in many games because, defensively, they’ve been able to stop the run and have a top corner of their own in Jason McCourty, who can contain at least one half of the opponents’ outside passing game. They haven’t been able to finish games because of offensive inconsistency, with either their running game or passing game letting them down. Protecting the ball and being efficient has been difficult with Kizer’s inexperience, with the flash often being dashed.

The Capitals won eight of their next 10, and they had won four in a row before losing 3-1 to the New York Islanders in Brooklyn on Monday.

Rookies Madison Bowey and Chandler Stephenson are adding depth to the Capitals (18-12-1).

“My game has definitely improved a lot throughout the last two months already,” Bowey told the Washington Post. “It’s just going to keep on building and keep on getting better as the season goes on. Obviously, this is definitely exciting and a big step ahead in the right direction for me.”

The Cowboys are 6-6 and still lingering on the fringe of playoff contention. Had they just repeated the woes of the previous three games, they would have been out of it — like Washington is now.

They’re not done, though. They found a way to tread water, to find their groove, to go beyond surviving with Elliott, to thriving.

The Cowboys offense did more than win. They remembered who they were, and why — and that they’re more than Elliott, and not invisible without him.

Trojans head coach Neal Brown and members of his staff share a bond with North Texas coach Seth Littrell. Troy defensive coordinator Vic Koenning held the same title at North Carolina when Littrell was the offensive coordinator with the Tar Heels.

Whitworth says Rams need adversity: While disappointed, Rams left tackle Andrew Whitworth took a philosophical view of the loss that ended their four-game winning streak. “It’s frustrating, but the reality is we need it, we need some adversity,” Whitworth said. “And if we get this opportunity again in the playoffs — and get a chance to get in — then we’ll be prepared for it.”

“I want to be able to listen and hear, to give hope, to give joy any way as possible as long as I have energy.”

Aaron Rodgers will not play again this season — With the Packers (4-4) falling out of the playoff hunt and not likely to back into contention, there is no reason for Rodgers to play again this year. The two-time NFL MVP can sit out of the rest of the year to ensure his broken right collarbone fully heals. There’s no need to risk injury in meaningless games and Rodgers can return next fall at 100 percent.

Tarasenko has 14 points in his last 13 games (nine goals, five assists) against the Oilers.

The Blues made it 2-0 when Dmitrij Jaskin scored at 7:35. He outmuscled Ryan Strome for the puck in the right circle and hit a rising wrist shot threw sailed over Edmonton goalie Cam Talbot’s left shoulder.

It used to be that football was just the programming after the parade. It used to be that football represented a proxy argument for all the arguments left on the table, a way to keep things agreeably small. For better or for worse, it’s large now, not just an acceptable way for Americans to argue but rather the American argument itself, the real thing.